Girl Unknown(52)

My eyes widened. ‘How upset she was?’

‘Oh, Christ, don’t do this now,’ he said, turning away from me and sitting down at the table.

‘Don’t do what?’

‘Don’t make this into a competition between you and her.’

‘What?’

He lifted his palms with an air of surrender. Then he picked up his sandwich and began to eat.

How had things spiralled out of control so quickly? I thought of Chris and Zo? sitting in the warm conviviality of our local pub, sharing a joke over their pints, and felt a twinge of envy. Inside our kitchen, it felt very cold. I could tell from the way David was hunched over his sandwich, a hardened look about him, that I would have to pull back, tread a little softly, if I wanted to persuade him.

‘Listen,’ I began, as I sat opposite him. ‘One of the girls at work has a place free in the house she shares. All young girls, in their early twenties. It’s in Ranelagh, close to UCD. I was thinking Zo? might be interested. What do you reckon?’

‘She couldn’t afford the rent,’ he replied, taking another bite.

‘Well, we could help out there.’

‘A few days ago you were losing the plot over my suggestion of paying her college fees. Now you want to stump up for her rent?’

I ignored the barb. ‘This was never supposed to be a permanent arrangement, David. It was just a stop-gap until she found somewhere new to live. Robbie’s going to be doing his Junior Certificate in a few months. He needs to be able to concentrate on his studies. Her presence at home is unsettling for all of us – a distraction.’

‘Robbie will be fine.’

‘Really? I’m worried about him.’

‘You’re overreacting. He’s fifteen. Teenage boys act up from time to time. And I’ll talk to him about his homework, get him to knuckle down a bit.’

‘Will you?’

He must have heard the doubt in my voice, for his gaze narrowed, his mouth settling into a grim line. ‘I just said I would, didn’t I?’

‘You’ve been so distracted lately. You keep brushing aside Robbie’s behaviour, instead of tackling him about it. I can’t help but feel that you’ve stepped back a bit from him – from Holly too. They need your attention as well, David, your love.’

‘Hang on a second. You’re the one who’s been out until all hours, doing trade shows and what-have-you, and now you’re giving me a hard time about not being there for the kids?’

‘What are you saying?’ I asked. ‘That I shouldn’t have gone back to work?’

The swing of the argument took over, each of us drawing on the peculiar accounting involved in parenting, trotting out all the hours each of us spent with the kids versus the time we had to ourselves. Revisiting old ground, we criticized each other’s parenting styles: I accused him of being too hands-off, then jumping in at the last minute with harsh discipline; he argued that I was too soft on them, too wrapped up in their lives, that I didn’t give them the space and freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. The whole thing was exhausting.

David finished his sandwich and got up.

‘What about Zo??’ I said, determined not to let him walk out of the room without reaching some kind of agreement.

He put his plate into the dishwasher, then straightened up. ‘I’ll talk to her. Tell her she can stay here until the exams are over.’

‘That’s not until the end of May.’

‘It’s a natural break, Caroline. End of semester. She’ll probably be heading abroad with her friends anyway – she mentioned something about a J1 visa for the States. We can make it clear that when she gets home after the summer she’ll no longer be living here.’

There was a degree of sense in what he was suggesting. Still, I felt a niggle of worry.

‘Happy now?’ he asked coldly, and without waiting for my answer, he left the room.

The house was empty when I got up the next morning, having waited for the others to leave. The days spent at the trade show had taken an unexpected toll. Peter had given us leave to come in late that morning, and as I lay there watching the time tick by on the digital clock, I felt the passage of dull pain around my body, tenderness at the bridge of my nose a warning sign I was coming down with a cold. I had left my phone downstairs in the kitchen the night before, and it was a relief not to be able to check for emails from the office. After a while, I got up and stood for a long time under a hot shower, feeling the heat permeating my skin. I thought of David and our argument, which was still unresolved. We had lain in bed alongside each other, not speaking. Some time after midnight, I had heard the front door open and close, Zo?’s light footfall on the stairs. I know he heard it too. The end of May, I thought, mentally tallying the weeks and months that would lead to that date, to a time we could finally be rid of her.

After my shower, I felt better. Wrapping my hair in a towel, I went downstairs in my bathrobe to make tea.

Zo? was in the kitchen, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She stood perfectly still, looking straight at me. My phone was in her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It beeped and I thought it was mine.’

It was true that our phones were similar, and that we had the same text alert, but still I was annoyed. I moved forward, and she handed it to me. Her bag and coat were on the counter and she picked them up, then said a stiff goodbye.